The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis

Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies weren’t in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well – always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadn’t moved for weeks.

"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18″

ALICE LOXTON talks to Danny Bird about her book on 18 individuals who left an indelible mark on British history before they were out of their teens

Parthian chicken

ELEANOR BARNETT recreates an ancient Roman dish that borrowed flavours from a rival neighbouring empire in the Middle East

"We need a meaningful story for the new generation - our composite union"

WHAT A SUMMER IT’S BEEN SO FAR, WITH AN astonishing election result.

A Pole apart

ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries

Medieval England's p olitical miracle

From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state

EASTERN PROMISES

Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China sometimes successfully, but often disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the troubled but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms

THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS

Æthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?

The king they couldn't kill

Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power

The long road back The election was tough for the Conservatives - but the past holds clues on how parties can return from the brink

It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson.

Succession 1603 - From Tudors to Stuarts - The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change

The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, writes Susan Doran, it wasn't long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects

Five things you (probably) didn't know about...Roman Britain

Rob Collins shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation

"It had been a tiny triumph, but it had been a British triumph"

MAX HASTINGS talks to Rob Attar about a daring airborne raid that provided a much-needed boost to Britain's morale in the darkest days of the Second World War

Dancing with the Devil

ROGER MOORHOUSE is impressed by a book that traces the fortunes of the diplomats charged with managing the west's wartime alliance with Josef Stalin

Victorian cucumber ice cream

ELEANOR BARNETT samples the delights of an unusual and refreshing version of one of the world's favourite summer treats

Anne Boleyn, ‘princess' of France

JOANNE PAUL is impressed by an account of how the Tudor queen's continental connections shaped her meteoric rise and dramatic fall

War and pieces

Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business

Gulbadan Begum The Mughal Jane Austen

Gulbadan Begum was meant to live a quiet life in the confines of a Mughal harem. Instead she made her mark on history twice: first, embarking on a pioneering pilgrimage to Islam’s holy cities; second, writing a remarkable history of her dynasty. RUBY LAL tells her story

Horror in France

On the morning of 10 June 1944, the residents of Oradour-sur-Glane were going about their lives as normally as was possible in occupied France: cooking, washing, shopping, playing. Little did they know that they were about to become the victims of one of the most infamous massacres of the Second World War.

"IT'S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THESE WORLD-CHANGING ANCIENT EVENTS"

Daisy Dunn tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the deeds of the extraordinary female figures who shaped them

Britain's war on the slave ships

In the early 19th century, a Royal Navy squadron was sent to west Africa to hunt down ships carrying enslaved people to the Americas. The operation was hailed as an act of \"pure unselfish philanthropy\". Yet, writes Mary Wills, the reality was far more tangled

The Aztecs at war

RHIANNON DAVIES discovers why war was so important to the Mesoamerican people - and why they believed a badly cooked meal could prevent a soldier from shooting straight

Towering achievement

NATHEN AMIN explores a 13th-century stronghold that was built to subdue independent-minded Welsh people, yet has since become a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds

Eighteenth-century mushroom ketchup

ELEANOR BARNETT shares her instructions for making a flavourful sauce with roots in south-east Asia

Goodbye to the gilded age

JOHN JACOB WOOLF is won over by an exploration of the Edwardian era, which looks beyond the golden-era cliché to find a nation beset by a sense of unease

The power of the few

Subhadra Das's first book catches two particular waves in current publishing.

The 'badass' icon

One of the problems with biography, if an author is not careful, is that it can quickly become hagiography.

Ghosts of Germany's past

KATJA HOYER is impressed by a study of a nation's attempts to grapple with the crimes it perpetrated during the Second World War

A window onto England's soul

SARAH FOOT has high praise for a book that traces the evolution of English Christianity over the course of 1400 years, through the lives of its greatest thinkers

"There was a general perception that Queen Victoria's mourning was neither normal nor acceptable”

JUDITH FLANDERS talks to Rebecca Franks about her new book, which delves into the customs surrounding dying, death and mourning in Victorian Britain